


until the nights grow colder

by Anonymous



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 10:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20007043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: An elder brother on the sister he'd been afraid to love.





	until the nights grow colder

In those long nine years after his birth, he’d grown to believe he’d always be an only child. Two brothers had died in the cradle and several more in his mother’s womb and from the time he had first been informed of the child to a month after its birth when he’d first held it, he’d insisted to himself and to anyone that tried to speak of it to him that it would soon die like all the others. If he assumed his sibling would die in a few weeks’ time, he wouldn’t have to mourn when it was gone.

But Elia had lived.

She had proven him wrong and defied everyone, because she was a princess of Dorne and their mother’s daughter from the second she was born.

She’d lived to a month and he’d rocked her while visiting home and despite himself, his heart had opened and she’d made a space for herself inside, because she’d made it to a month where none of their siblings had done so and batted at his nose with her tiny fist and she was his sister with a name and a soul, not an easily disregarded _it._

She’d lived to a year and he’d closed his eyes and prayed for her and their younger sibling, new to the world, both, because she’d broken through the armour he’d built, first finding the chink, then leveraging the gap to tear the plate clean off, and now he couldn’t tell himself his mother’s other children would not live.

She’d lived to five and he’d stopped holding his breath and waiting for the shoe to fall, even as Oberyn was stronger and more robust, because she had lived and laughed and played in the pools of the Water Gardens just as so many other children and was past the age where children who would die in infancy died.

She’d lived to two and ten and been visiting with a Fowler friend of hers when Doran had arrived at Skyreach to settle yet another dispute between Lord Fowler and the marcher lords, only to find her sitting cross-legged on the floor with a satisfied smirk curving her mouth as she oversaw her host’s handshake with Bryen Caron and the question _what took you so long, brother_ gleaming in her eyes as she looked up at him.

She’d lived to six and ten and womanhood and managed to charm just about anyone that came to Sunspear with her quick wit and radiant smiles and thoughtful, patient input on all the issues of the day, Dorne’s beloved princess, their pride and joy.

She’d lived to nine and ten, a princess born and a princess still and now the future queen, and he’d beamed for her as she wed the crown prince in the sight of gods and men and everyone that had dismissed her as weak and unworthy.

She’d lived to one and twenty and his heart had nearly stopped when he’d received word of the difficulty of her pregnancy before he’d sent Oberyn to her side in his stead, wishing he could be there but knowing he was the eldest and had duties to Dorne.

She’d lived to three and twenty and borne the crown a second child in as many years, nearly dying in the process but fighting herself and her son with all the strength and steel of Dorne and winning, as if to prove a point to her worthless husband and the simpering courtiers that whispered about her behind her back.

She’d lived and she’d lived and she’d lived.

She’d lived to four and twenty and lived no longer.

She had defied the odds and lived and thrived, all things good and gentle and joyful. Now she was dead and the usurpers had burnt her body in the Targaryen tradition, a farcical demonstration of respect and a transparent attempt at hiding what they’d done to her, so House Martell had not even been returned her bones to honour as they would.

She was dead and it hadn’t been sickness or a riding accident or childbirth that had killed her but selfishness and callousness and incomprehensible cruelty.

She was dead and it had been brutal and painful and so meaningless – the abandoned wife of a dead prince, held hostage by the power the rebels had rebelled against, murdered after the war had already been won for no reason at all.

She was dead and she’d been alone, without anyone – _him_ – to hold her hand or tell her they – _he_ – loved her.

She was dead and her babes murdered, too, the best woman he’d known and her two perfect children, murdered for selfishness, for greed, for power called pragmatism.

She was dead and he hadn’t been able to do anything to prevent it and how could he be responsible for Dorne and all its children if he couldn’t even protect his _own little sister_?

She was dead and should Robert Baratheon ever be so stupid as to set foot in Dorne again, it would be whichever Dornishman whose path he crossed first that would kill him for it.

She was dead and all of Dorne wept for her.

Her eyes had gleamed impishly whenever she read something new she wanted to share, Doran remembered, and it was all he could do not to weep himself. She deserved tears. But if he succumbed to them now, he would never stop weeping, and he could not fall apart now of all times.

Elia deserved tears, but she deserved justice more.

Oberyn’s grief was sorrow and fury all as one, violent outbursts and days of isolation and refusal to see anyone, and as much as Doran wanted him to emerge so they could begin their preparations, he would never be able to begrudge his brother that.

His younger siblings been inseparable as children, and as agonizing as losing their sister was to _him,_ at least he had memories of a world without her, of wells of strength he could still call on that had made it possible to convince himself that his infant sister would not live to a month. Oberyn had no such thing. To him, for all Elia’s frailty, she had never been vulnerable. Of course he’d be devastated now, too much to be rational about anything. Soon, though…

His younger brother was cleverer than most realized, often too clever to be anything other than restless and searching for the next challenge that wouldn’t bore him. Soon, the fog of grief clouding his head would clear enough for him to think. Soon, that brilliant mind could be put to use for something that would never bore him, no matter how long it took, because there was no one in the world Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell loved more than his elder sister. Soon, they would begin to plan.

Doran allowed himself a thin smile.

The viper and the grass that sheltered it, the blood of Nymeria the both of them – Elia would not go unavenged. She would not go forgotten. The arc of the world would bend towards justice. They would make it so. _Unbowed, unbent, unbroken,_ those were their words, and those would be honoured. Not for pride, not for the family name, not for some silly concept of honour, but for their _sister,_ for Elia, brilliant and beautiful and dead before her time.

They would have justice. They would have vengeance.

 _I swear it, Elia,_ he thought. _On our mother’s grave and your children’s ashes and all of Dorne, I swear it._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote that thing about Oberyn loving Elia more than anyone else in the world, then was like, no, I can’t say that! And tried to qualify it or modify it in a way so that I wasn’t implying that he loves her more than Doran or his daughters, but then I stopped myself and actually thought about it, because…it’s not quite pleasant to look at it in that light, but I think it’s pretty damn canon that he’s so caught up in grief for her that he considers it more important to die seeking justice than live for his remaining family. He loves the rest of his family…but Elia is special to him. That's a huge part of the tragedy of his character. And honestly, she deserves that, to be the person someone loves more than anyone else.


End file.
